The 2008 general election had a lot of excitement and a spike in voter turnout with a local-born candidate for president, spirited mayoral races on three islands and a couple of high-interest ballot initiatives.

But sometime soon, we're going to have to address the lack of excitement lower on the ballot — especially in legislative races, where most incumbents were re-elected either unopposed or against little-known and under-financed challengers.

Voters in many districts had no viable choices for the U.S. House, state House, state Senate or City Council.

Without real ballot choices, voter interest can only sink and democracy at the most basic level in Hawai'i becomes little more of a formality.

We saw this in the September primary election, which lacked the presidential vote and ballot initiatives to make up for all the empty spaces in legislative races.

Record-low turnout barely scratched 35 percent as voters were unwilling to give up a good Saturday to participate when there was little for them to vote on.

There were 278 candidates for the 112 offices up for election this year, down from 324 candidates in 2006 and 410 in 2002 — a drop of 47 percent in the last six years.

Candidates in 31 races this year were unopposed — 28 percent — and the percentage of unopposed incumbents was over 40 percent in legislative races.

Part of the problem was that local Republicans were asleep at the wheel and didn't field candidates for six of the 12 state Senate seats up this year or 22 of 51 House seats. The GOP couldn't even find a candidate to defend the Kona seat held by retiring Republican Sen. Paul Whalen.

We can partly attribute this to the ineptitude of Republican leadership — "political malpractice," as a top Democratic organizer aptly called it — but also blame campaign finance laws that make it nearly impossible for challengers to compete against the heavy flow of special-interest money to incumbents.

A 2006 study by the state Campaign Spending Commission showed that winning House and Senate candidates — mostly incumbents — had an average of three times as much to spend as their challengers.

The overriding influence of special-interest money in Hawai'i legislative elections freezes out not only Republicans, but also independent and reform-minded Democrats who might challenge some of the party's weak players in the Legislature if they could get a level playing field.

Statutory and constitutional reforms could help, such as tighter restrictions on special-interest campaign donations, publicly funded elections and legislative term limits to assure turnover.

The Legislature has approved a test of publicly funded county elections on the Big Island, which is good, but the experiment runs over three election cycles and we can't allow it to become an excuse to wait six years to make other needed changes.

Incumbent Democratic legislators and the interest groups that support them are naturally resistant to changing a system that works so much in their favor.

What's needed is for individuals who cherish open and competitive elections to organize and make saving democracy in Hawai'i a priority on the magnitude of saving the environment.

If lawmakers hear it from enough people, perhaps they can be persuaded to put the obvious public interest in ballot choices ahead of their self-interest in preserving the status quo.

It'll get their attention if the candidates with the big bankrolls and long list of special-interest endorsements come to be viewed by voters with suspicion rather than approval.

As long as we keep letting incumbent office-holders buy their way into power without opposition, voters have little say in shaping public policy.

David Shapiro's columns are archived at www.volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog, Volcanic Ash, at http://volcanicash.honadvblogs.com.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. His columns are archived at www.volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.